l6o 
To Elysium by Buckboard. 
'InThfcc Jaunts— Jaunt the Third. 
"A FINE mornin" fer bar! This hyar fog's stickier'n 
chewiii' gum!" The speaker was Beaug; the hour 
3 A. M. The buckboard" s ex-passengers were wide 
awake, the horses stood saddled and ready, and a break- 
fast of ham, scrambled eggs and coffee, warranted to 
remove the hair from a dog's back, smoked before 
them. Thus seated in Cimmerian darkness, in Beaug's 
hog camp, on the South Fork of Eel, while the soft, 
salt fog filled their nostrils, they gave heed, between 
bites, to their host's final instructions. These were 
neither long, nor hard to remember. Beaug was to go 
on fqot with the hounds — lie preferred it so. The 
guests were to be mounted. They were to keep well 
in earshot of the dogs; but were not to try to follow 
them. "Stick to the ridges," was Beaug's caution. At 
the same time lie dwelt on the necessity of being always 
on the ridge immediately adjacent to the canyon where 
the hounds were working. They were to take food 
with them — "Mebbe, hunt'll last all day; mebbe, two 
days; mebbe, bar'll tree in an hour!" They were to 
shoot at nothing but bear— 'ceptin' lion"; i. e., panther. 
They were to approach the bear, when treed, from up 
hill, because the hounds would be on the side of the 
tree nearest to the bear; that is, they would be as 
close to the bear as the ground permitted, and if he 
heard any one approaching from behind, he would 
back down, claw up a few dogs and make ofif. If the 
chase led where the horses could not follow, they were 
to abandon the horses and proceed on foot — tire horses 
would reach camp all right. Lastly, the first man at 
the tree was to shoot the bear! 
Up a precipitous trail they ride, Beaug and his 
hounds in the lead; and so, for an hour, until they were 
as wet from the constant slapping of the fog-laden un- 
derbrush, as if they had been drenched in a cistern. 
A halt! It is Beaug at the bridle! "Thar's plenty 
berries 'round hyar," he is saying; 'T'U stop hyar; you 
follow trail to top of ridge." "But how in thunder can 
we? I can't see my hand." "Hosses knows." And 
they did know, for just as the first, faint glimpse of 
dawn came and one felt, rather than saw, that it was 
day, they stopped, and Bob and Marin managed to 
make out through the fog-rack that they had reached 
the summit. Then a tedious wait, a smoke, more wait- 
ing, several smokes. For the twentieth time Bob's 
eyes strive to pierce the impenetrable mist, and he asks: 
"Where do you suppose'Beaug is now?" — when — hark! 
clear and shrill, up from the canj^on's depths it wells 
— that canine chorus! Let him who hears that music 
and yet feels no fire in his blood, no answering throb 
of pulse, no responsive thrill of nerve, no revel in his 
breast, scan well his shoulder blades for budding 
wings — for, surely, he is something more than human! 
It is the oldest music in this world of ours. Centuries 
unnumbered have come and gone, since first its wild, 
sweet cadence smote man's ear and filled his soul with 
gladness, and when the end of Time and all things 
comes, whether by polar ice-cap slow creeping over 
earth and sea, remorseless and immense, or by a fiery 
rain and kindled sphere, of this be sure — that in that 
last, dread hour, when helpless, hopeless man stands 
at bay before the ravening elements upon a dying 
world, his faithful little brother will be there to share 
his doom and wail earth's threnody. 
Hark I There it swells again ! The very horses neigh 
and prick their ears. "Let's after them!" cries Marin. 
Along the ridge they spur, heedless of switching boughs 
and snare-like creepers — a headlong, breakneck race — 
while ever from the canyon's mist-wreaths floats that 
wild paean. "Hold up!" cries Bob. "They are swing- 
ing back again." Both turn and scamper madly back 
to their first halting place; bej'^ond it, and ever further; 
through redwood groves, where the fog broods; 
through wild pastures, flower-decked haunt of deer and 
bee; up a ragged mountain -side, furrowed and seamed; 
across its rock-clad peak and down again through seas 
of fragrant thyme; across a burnt-opening, where the 
shy redwood-lily blooms unseen of men; through 
woods of madrone and scrawny scrub oak; through 
brush and more brush — and still the pack gives tongue, 
somewhere, beyond in that illimitable fogbank. It was 
then, at the third brush patch, that Bob and Marin 
parted. "I'm going down here," he said, and turning 
his horse on to a lateral spur, vanishes. Poor Bob! 
That turn costs him the finish. 
Bridle in hand, Marin picks his way around that 
brush patch, and when he emerges from the timber 
his ears are greeted by that .soul-stirring melody upon 
the ridge itself, an instant — ijhen, beyond it. The bear 
has crossed the ridg§! Dovyci, straight down, into the 
canyon's heart the wild ch^sei leads. Marin rides furi- 
ously. He reaches a pointVabove the dogs— how far 
above them he cannot tell — %hen — ^Ah ha! "Dinna ye 
hear the pibroch?" There's,-fib mistaking that. Treed 
at last! He essays the steej) Jslope on horseback, dis- 
mounts and scrambles down and ever down into the 
chill, wet fog. Surely he must be beneath the tree, 
he thinks. The din of the baying is all about him— it 
seems to pervade the fog, the earth, the very foliage. 
A hand — -'this Beaug's — clutches his arm and draws him 
forward. "Shoot thar!" says a voice. Where? But — 
surely, that shadowy patch in branching oak is darker, 
fuzzier, than the fog about it? Stay! It moved! A 
long, deep breath; a moment's struggle, ere mind has 
mastered muscle; the ivory foresight shows clear and 
true Upon it. R-r-rip! "Mite too low!" Beaug says, 
"Bar's comin' down!" Hunched, with buttocks first, 
he comes; but the second shot strikes him fairly in 
the back, and with a pig-like squeal he falls among 
the dogs. Knife in hand, Beaug flings himself upon 
him, brushing the hounds aside with hairy paw, as if 
they were house flies. All is over. Two hounds, deep 
scored, limp whining back. The bear" lies dead. 
On Bob's horse, blindfolded with Marin's coat, ere 
he would consent to receive the uncanny burden, they 
packed the bear into camp. He. .was very fat,- Beaug 
FOREST ANt) STREAM. 
said, but not a very large one — four years old, about; 
his weight, perhaps 240 pounds. It was the only bear 
they got, that trip; although they hunted hard two 
days; saw "sign" in plenty, but it was mostly old. Bob 
shot an otter one afternoon, sunning himself before a 
cleft in the rocks — his home. Trout there were in 
myriads, but bear hunting is close kin to strenuous 
toil, and wheh the shadows began to lengthen in the 
canyon, or rather, when the mist-rack floated in and 
wove its aerial cobwebs, that rough shake-bed within 
the cabin called oh, so loudly, to tired limbs and 
aching muscles. And yet, ye of the teeming cities, 
soul-weary of the never-ceasing struggle of the pit 
where snarling man gnaws man, what would ye give 
for one such week, a day, an hour? 
On the morning of the 15th, the opening day for 
deer, Beaug packed them out, herding the animals be- 
fore him like some old-time Nimrod, while Bob and 
Marin, on foot, hunted the. gulches, and Bob secured a 
big Pacific buck, that is a deer whose antlers tower 
straight upward from the frontal bone a foot or more 
befoi'e they fork; and Marin scored a most inglorious 
miss at five short rods! Tell it not in Gath! Next day 
brought better luck, and he, too, got his deer, and 
- then — the road again. Beaug, whole-souled, single- 
hearted Beaug, strove hard to stay them; but there 
were other mountains to be climbed and other canyons 
to be explored, and the zvanderlust was. in their 
blood. 
Just here, a digression. When the war with Spain 
was declared, one day, through the human herd that 
thronged a city office, strode Beaug Bowman — a big- 
horn among a flock of common sheep. In that lonely 
ranch upon the mountain top, those two, mother and 
son, heard the belated news, discussed it, and with 
her blessing he had come 250 miles on horseback to 
enlist. What it cost her to give it — let some mother's 
aching heart reveal! And here steps in the irony of 
fate. It chanced that a pudgy politician, eager to ex- 
change his title of "General," acquired by comfortably 
filling an arm chair in the attorney-general's office in 
so'me western State, for the less-imposing but far 
more honorable one of Colonel of A^olunteers. was en- 
gaged in recruiting, on paper, a cavalry regiment, on 
the bare chance that the President might be cajoled 
into giving him the coveted commission. Poor, un- 
sophisticated Beaug! He knew all the tricks of "bar 
an' varmint," but the "General's" slink-eyed runners 
knew wiles not practiced by their kin-folk in Mendocino 
forests. They trapped him. For days he gnawed his 
heart, while his friends — there were many in the city 
who had bivouacked with him in his own far, free coun- 
try — seeing his woe and weai'iness of spirit at the long 
delay, urged him to let the "General" and his paper 
regiment go, and enlist in the California Volunteers. 
"Can't do it, boys! I done sign; I done give mah 
word to the General; it's tarnation hard, but I must 
stick it out," he said. At length, two of Beaug's 
friends, without his knowledge, sought an interview 
with the "General" and gave that embryonic man-of- 
blood a talk, straight from the shoulder. He signed 
Beaug's release; whereupon the bear hunter let out a 
warwhoop, hugged the crowd to the serious detriment 
of their ribs, and struck a bee-line for the volunteers' 
rendezvous. They snapped him up, but poor Beaug's 
company never got nearer the firing line than Oak- 
land. In that comparatively peaceful suburb, out by 
the powder works, the greatest bear hunter of Cali- 
fornia, a crack rifle shot, and one of the most expert 
trackers in all the West, put in the long, hot summer 
patrolling camp. Here his friends sought him often 
with gifts. Not whisky or tobacco — he never uses 
either— but — candy! For be it known, Beaug has as 
swe_et a tooth as any of his bears! 
As Goliath labored up the slope of Red Mountain — 
an endless slope it seemed — the wayfarers came sudden- 
ly upon a bedraggled object seated by- the roadside, 
head in hands. It was their friend, the tramp of Mark 
West. He was in a pitiful plight; one shoe was gone, 
the other tied on with a bit of rope, gaped widely; his 
clothing hung in ribbons; his whilom air of self-com- 
placent impudence had vanished with the shoe, and 
when he spoke it was in whispers, broken by fits of 
coughiilg. He said that he was sick and starving. He 
looked both. Three days before, it seemed, he had 
committed the unpardonable imprudence_ of stealing a 
5'oung porker — unpardonable, because in Mendocino 
no hungry man need ever ask twice at cabin door for 
food. He had been seen, the country-side assembled, 
men and dogs; they hunted the thief through canyons 
and up mountains; by some miracle, he baffled the 
trackers; wandered hopelessly bemazed; stumbled on 
the road, famished, half dead. What to do with him 
was the- question that perplexed the buckboarders. 
They debated it, while Bob cooked a hasty meal and 
Marin administered a teaspoonful of quinine in a half 
tumbler of whisky. One thing was certain, the man 
was in no condition to walk. On to the buckboard 
they packed the tramp, and Goliath, albeit protesting, 
bore him- to the summit, where they left him, together 
with a -small store of venison and provisions, with a 
shepherd.. Kind-hearted Bob supplemented this gift 
with $2.56' for stage fare— "For," said he, "that camel 
yarn of his was all right, and, besides, I feel toward 
him about as the old colored mammy down in New 
Orleans felt toward General Butler, when she hallooed 
after him: 'Good-by, Massah Butler! Good-by! You's 
never stole nawthin' frura me, honey!' " What became 
of the man, they never heard. 
Blue Rock — one house upon a barren, wind-swept 
ridge, and that vacant — did not detain the travelers, 
but they supped that, night with the sole inhabitant 
of Bell Springs, an aged German. Their diplomacy 
was sorely taxed, ere they could gain admittance. 
"Dose campers vas der Teufel," he grumbled; "Dey 
shooted me mein olt chackass for a deer last veek 
alretty." This remark, be it understood, was made to 
Bob, the best game shot of his county, and Marin 
. maliciously told the story on their return to civiliza- 
tion. Unto this day, when Bob shows up with a gun, 
some one is sure to inquire, anxiously, whether there 
are any jackasses loose. 
Goliath, after a night in a comfortable barn and a 
double ration of hay and ground barley, made a record 
run to where the map town of Dark Canyon should- 
[AuG. 29, 1903. 
have been, but was not. A soap box, nailed to a whitf 
oak, marked its site. Somewhere, no doubt, in the 
shadowy recesses of that deep, blue gulch to the right 
of them, was tucked away a pioneer family, striving 
with an united efl'ort to wrest a tiny patch of arable 
land from the virgin forest; but the travelers saw 
nothing of them, nor could they discern their house. 
At noon they halted beneath a magnificent tan bark, 
which, with a stone monument, marks the dividing line 
of Mendocino and Humboldt counties. The oak, 
crowning the summit of the divide, was evidently a 
favorite stopping place for passing wayfarers, and pen- 
ciled in a clerkly hand on the stone at its base, ap- 
peared the following; 
Jas. M. Hedges & Wm. F. Marks 
reached here on bicycles from S. F., 
in 4 days, 16 hrs., 27 minutes. 
Just beneath, in the crabbed fist of one more used 
to plow handle than to pen, was scrawled this line : 
WIcH THEM sAME IS 2 LiRES. 
Bob exploded. "Don't you see the picture?" he 
cried. "Old Mizzourah, resting his tired team, sees the 
inscription and laboriously spells it out, letter by let- 
ter. He has traveled this road many a year, and as 
he reads his mind runs over in review every grade and 
gulch between here and Healdsburg, let us say! He 
has, of course, never seen a bicycle. The more he 
ponders over it the more the shameless mendacity of 
the assertion that any human being could traverse the 
distance in any kind of conveyance in four days is 
borne irresistibly home to him. Then he gets real mad 
about it; chmbs down; fishes in his overalls till he 
catches a pencil stub, and tells folks his opinion of- the 
character of men who seek to mislead the traveling- 
public by promulgating such a wilful lie!" 
Night overtook them, before they reached Harris, 
which was to be their outfitting point for their deer 
hunt, and they pitched their camp at a spring in a little 
hollow beside the road. It was Marin's turn to cook, 
and he had just set the coffee pot on to boil when the 
brush crackled and out stepped a plump forked-horn, 
almost into the fire. It seemed little better than mur- 
der to shoot him, but the larder was bare of fresh ineat 
and both travelers were blessed with robust appetites. 
The buck was dead before he knew what had hap- 
pended, and his liver, minced in cubes, with red peppers, 
bacon, salt, thyme and butter, was stewing in a pan 
five minutes after he made his debut. It was a most 
successful first appearance, too — if the reader doubts it, 
let him try deer liver a la Marin; but let him be gener- 
ous with his butter and shun lard and cottolene, and 
all their works! 
In those days Twomey was Harris and Harris was 
Twomey! The persuasive personality of this anything- 
but-sad "exile of Erin" vivified every nook and corner 
of that small community. Twomey was the hotel, also 
the general store, eke the livery, board and feed stable, 
Wells, Fargo & Co., the Oregon stage station, the 
blacksmith's shop — in a pinch, the bank! If one sub- 
tracted Twomey from Harris, the remainder could be 
packed oil in a gunny sack. His poll was frosted — not 
so his heart. His blue eyes, undimmed by years, 
laughed from a face, clean-shaven, save for a fringe 
of snowy whisker. His dress was broadcloth, with an 
immaculate shirt and old-fashioned black satin stock — 
and this in a country where the lord of 20,000 acres 
felt himself regally apparalled if he shed his "chaps" 
and donned a blue flannel shirt, new overalls and a 
clean neckerchief! In short, Twomey looked like an 
ancestral portrait, and talked like an Hibernian angel 
who had been temporarily sojourning in southern Mis- 
souri! The voyagers required pack animals — Twomey 
procured two mules — created them, it almost seemed. 
They sought a hunting ground — Twomey knew the 
very place, a sheepherder's deserted cabin, on the big 
divide over in Trinity, between Mad River and the 
main branch of Eel. A guide? Twomey had the man 
at the barn long before sun-up. Perchance, he, too, ere 
this has crossed that other Big Divide toward which 
we all are faring. Qiiien sabe? If this b? so, then may 
the sod rest lightly on him in his long. sleep, for he 
was a gentle, wholesome, helpful man. 
Seated in the store, smoking their pipes, the evening: 
before packing-in to Trinity, Bob's attention was at- 
tracted by the appearance of a customer. The man's 
dress was the wonted garb of the region, and his pur- 
chase was a "bah'l of flou-ah," but that face surely 
never saw daylight in a southern cabin. "Was that an 
Indian?" asked Bob. "Divvil a bit," answered Twomev 
—"That's Charley Lee, the Choinese." 
"But I thought you Humboldt people drove all the 
Chinamen out of the county in the 'seventies and al- 
lowed none to come in since?" 
"Roight ye are, me bhoy! We done that same, but 
Charley stayed. It was this way — this is the way it 
was. Ages ago, long afore Oi kum across the plains to 
Oregon, Charley was settled in this valley. Shure, 
he was a pioneer in these parts ! He'd married a 
squaw woman and was raisin' childer and vigitoibles, 
as aisy an' plisint as ye plase, down in the hook of 
Eel River. Whin the bhoys kum in, Charley treated 
thim whoite. Showed thim the best locations an' was 
handy-Ioike in gettin' of thim started. Thin .kum the 
Injun raids, an' the sojers were no good — leastwise, the 
Sicketerry in Washington wouldn't lit thim kill no- 
body — just pacifoy thim. Wurrah! Those were bad 
days for us! Iv'ry mornin' most, Oi'd hear tell of 
some woman or childer or lone proshpector bein' 
massacreed by thim burnin', murtherin' diwils. So we 
hilt town-maytins an' called for volunteers, _ an' whin 
we foinally rounded thim up and woiped thim out at 
Shelter Cove, Charley was with us an' he done a man's 
wourk that day, he did, so he did. Whin some of the 
bhoys corrhalled a preacher an' thought as it'd look 
koind of rayspechtable loike to 'rect a Baptis' choorch| 
